Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe IN HIS USUAL strategic articulations on the interest and future
wellbeing of Igbo people, George Enyoazu has on his Facebook wall, beginning 8
September 2016, raised the profound issue of choice for Igbo Americans as they
decide to vote at the US presidential election on Tuesday 8 November 2016. This initiative, as would have been expected, resulted in a debate involving
several correspondents and the exchanges have indeed been hearty and
informative. Enyoazu emphatically asks Igbo
Americans to prioritise or privilege the motherland, Biafra, when they go out
to cast their vote at this poll. One cannot overemphasise Enyoazu’s timely
appeal. I am not aware of any US administration since the outbreak of the Igbo
genocide in May 1966 during the Lynden Johnson presidency that has
unambiguously supported genocidist Nigeria as that of Barack Obama’s (and
Hillary Clinton as secretary of state). The historic tragedy of this support
for the continuation of the Igbo genocide is underscored, further, by the fact
that Obama is the first African-descent president of the US republic in 233
years of existence. Hillary Clinton states clearly that her presidency, if she
were elected, would continue the essentials of 8 years of the Obama residency. Igbo Americans surely have a role to play in these hectic times and they
cannot ignore the 3.1 million and more Igbo murdered since Sunday 29 May 1966
as they cast their votes in November. Or, would they? I am posting the
following link as a contribution to this all important subject that Enyoazu has
started: http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html
(Sonny Rollins Quintet, “Decision” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone, Donald Byrd, trumpet; Wynton Kelly, piano; Gene Ramey, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 16 December 1956])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).